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User blog:Merricksdad/WM dead?
Sorry I have been sick and not on the computer much the last few days, so I have missed all your worries. As some of you have already noticed, WM requires the use of the old Graph API version 1, which is for some reason no longer available on the Graph API Explorer for testing. Because WM is not an app, it cannot retreive its own app id and then request posts, so it relies on a facebook owned app to get it for us. Not that such a solution would work anyway, since the new method of retrieving posts for any app is to request those posts directly through that app, and it will retrieve only those posts for that app or which you share an app with another friend/subscriber/etc. Until further notice, WM2 and 3 are deader than doornails. Schrödinger's cat has definitely passed on. Unless somebody can find access to the Graph API tokens via another source, specifically for version 1.0, WM will not recover in it's current form. This is the intent of FB staff: that no app shall be able to provide details about other users unless a shared topic is available. In the longrun, this is a very good thing. But for the use of WM, that totally destroys us. Unfortunately, we were all told that the end time was April of next year, not some random date in November this year. But then again, what is new? They do this all the time. It is very depressing that a simple mistake, or push ahead like this, would be allowed, since I am sure there are many apps out there that suddenly went dark the other day. Hopefully they were not good apps, or otherwise important to somebody's work life. I had planned to spend some time this late winter rebuilding WM to work like it once did, by reading in data off a facebook driven page listing all your app bonuses, or at least X out of Y number of posts it was willing to show. That would have been better than empty data sets forever. And again, unfortunately, this months-early change has caught me off guard. I don't have the hours in a day to fully rewrite the old FVWM or to upgrade it in any good time. And because of that, many of you will likely leave the WM scene and/or FV and other apps before I can complete such a project. And for that, I am sorry. All I can say is good luck in finding an app or another device which is already working in the old way FVWM used to work. Those apps have probably already gone offline though, or will by April, based on the rules changes for tokens. As in that app won't be able to query anything about game posts not created by that app. So for instance, the Bonus Collector for FV cannot get bonuses for FV after April, because it is not FV. There may be back doors I don't know about, but now more than ever, FB will be trying to close those gaps. In addition, while looking for game post pages, or even possible new filters, I game across the fact that FB has also now locked all users out of the public feed edge. They seem to have a secret registration process to gain access to it, but the page which talks about it specifically says it is not available for request at this time. Which leads me to believe they will soon require all game posts to be handled inside the game, or in the app activity panel, rather than on any wall or common feed. This is certainly a game changer. I will continue to watch for updates to the API which allow older functions new access, but I don't have much hope left for that happening. They are moving forward, not sideways. If anybody has the time and will power, I suggest looking into the old FVWM code and moving forward again from that. The API is no longer the way to go with this. We need to go back to the hard way. The other alternative is to get a crew of dedicated people to make more of those in-game mailbox handlers we had a few years ago for PT and Ravenwood. Those were great, but I do warn you, the page code changes very often, and update requirements are frequent. If this never happens, I'd at least like to thank everybody for sticking with me this far. All of those who donated over the years and helped me maintain internet access so I could help you continue using this family of scripts. I'd like to thank everybody who build or maintained any sidekicks over the years, especially for those gawd-aweful update-heavy games like PT and FV. Definitely, thank you very much! And most of all, I would like to thank Joe Simmons for even creating such a script in the first place, and opening my mind to all the things a JavaScript software was capable of, especially through GreaseMonkey. Without that original code, I would probably still know just about nothing pertaining to current uses of JavaScript. Super special thanks to DDM, who originally took over FVWM when Joe wanted out. You put a hell of a lot of work into that script and worked with me even though at first it was totally against your gut feeling. Thank you everybody! Category:Blog posts